Philosophies of Technologies

1The Question of Technology and Ecological Constraints

Today, we can speak of the Western technology crisis, just as Husserl spoke of the “European sciences crisis” almost a century ago, with the same paradoxical spirit. At the end of his life in the mid-1930s, when Husserl was writing the texts that would make up his final work, the famous posthumous collection on The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl 1954), the sciences had never experienced such a renewal; not only the physical sciences, which were shaken up by the concurrent double revolution of general relativity and quantum mechanics, but also the human sciences, which were then being devoted to all areas of human life. It seems no less paradoxical to speak of a technology crisis today. Technology has never been so developed or so inventive. The digital revolution and new information and communication techniques have profoundly revolutionized our behavior, our modes of production and even our modes of government; nanotechnologies and biotechnologies, in turn, seem to be taking over, promising equally spectacular revolutions. However, therein lies the paradox: over the past 30 years, we have been going through a phase of profound technological changes, yet we have not pushed past the boundaries of shortages, lack and scarcity¹. Famines are far from being eradicated; resources are running out, appearing to be less and less renewable; and the struggle for the appropriation of goods ...